Original Face

Another one bites the dust

    When a politician starts speaking about broad themes in his concession speech, it is a sure sign that he knows that his time in the spotlight will soon be over.  Tonight's speech by Rudy Giuliani had that valedictory sound to it.  I even think that once or twice he slipped up and spoke about the campaign in the past tense.  Of course, publicly his spokespeople are denying that the endgame has come, but it is difficult for them to speak to reporters with a straight face and present any scenario of Giuliani going forward,  He is out of both cash and momentum. 
    The question is now if, but when, he formally withdraws.  Rumors are circulating that it will come as early as tomorrow morning.  Tomorrow night is the debate at the Reagan Library and it is unlikely he will be on stage as a contender.  His political capital, such as it is, will very quickly fade and a fast exit and endorsement--almost certainly of McCain--will provide Giuliani with a chance for a major appointive position in a McCain Administration. 
    Romney will soldier on even though the GOP establishment will begin to rally around McCain and place pressure on Mitt to pull out.  Movement conservatives such as Limbaugh will find it difficult to embrace McCain unless McCain begins to repair fences with the Party's right flank.  Given the state of disarray in the Democratic field (even though Florida's Democratic primary was merely a beauty contest without delegates at stake, Clinton's victory by a wide margin tonight helps her blunt, at least to some degree, the loss in South Carolina) the Republicans will recognize the wisdom of anointing McCain soon.
    The only possible flaw for McCain is himself.  He has never liked being on the "inside."  He is more than capable of putting a foot wrong in a way that could make conservatives sit on their hands this election cycle.  We will soon see if he has learned the lessons of last summer and if he has finally grown up.

   

Chill Bill

    It seems that Hillary's tears change move voters and Bill's anger can too--but in opposite ways.  Since Bill and Hill have been doing to Obama and other Democrats what they have done to Republicans for years--character assassination, use of innuendo and invective--Hillary's standing in the polls has dropped through the floor.  The thought of having to endure four more years of this nonsense is more than even faithful Democrats seem to be able to bear.  If The Clinton machine continues down this path, and they will despite all evidence that they should cease, Hillary might win the nomination, but the ill will generated will be difficult to overcome in the general election.
    Especially if John McCain is the nominee, as it now seems likely.  The decision of the very very popular governor of Florida, Charlie Crist (he enjoys a 75% approval rating in the state-- yes, 75%) to endorse the Arizona senator should be enough to propel him to victory on January 29th.  That would doom Giuliani and make the GOP, which hates internecine warfare to coalesce around McCain. 
    Unlike the GOP, the Democrats (Will Rogers once said that he wasn't a member of an organized political party, he was a Democrat) seem to love destroying themselves and snatching defeat out of the jaws of victory.  That is always the Republicans "secret weapon."

Time for some silliness

For no reason but to make you smile.  John Updike's paean to the professorial life, entitled "V.B. Nimble, V.B. Quick."  He took as his inspiration a talk listed in the BBC's Radio Times:  "Science Pure and Applied, by V.B. Wigglesworth, F.R.S,, Quick Professor of Biology in the University of Cambridge."

V.B. Wigglesworth wakes at noon,
Washes, shaves and very soon
Is at the lab; he reads his mail,
Swings a tadpole by the tail,
Undoes his coat, removes his hat,

Dips a spider in a vat
Of alkaline, phones the press,
Tells them he is F.R.S.,
Subdivides six protocells,
Kills a rat by ringing bells,

Writes a treatise, edits two
Symposia on “Will man do?,”
Gives a lecture, audits three,
Has the sperm club in for tea,
Pensions off an ageing spore,

Cracks a test tube, takes some pure
Science and applies it, finds,
His hat, adjusts it, pulls the blinds,
Instructs the jellyfish to spawn,
And, by one o’clock, is gone.

Blood oil

    For weeks now in Boston the radio air waves have been saturated by commercials from Citizens Energy by its founder, Joe Kennedy, stating that the oil which it sells comes from a company "owned by the Venezuelan people."  But in these ads, Kennedy goes further.  He castigates those who oppose taking the oil from Hugo Chavez's regime.
    Chavez is the latest thug embraced by the Left.  Like Che Guevara, Chavez is lionized and hailed as a "courageous fighter against American imperialism."  What they don't say about Chavez is that he is a through and through anti-Semite whose actions, as well as words, compare to the early days of the Nazis.  This week, Chavez's storm troopers have once again vandalized the Jewish quarters of Venezuela's cities in a manner reminiscent of Kristallnatch.  He has done it before.  He has gone on the air a number of times with the same "questions" about the "Jews in our midst" which we have heard before in pre-war Germany.  His has reminded his listners of the ancient "blood libel" and that a cabal of Jews control the world's financial markets, that they are manipulating these markets in ways that make them the enemies of Venezuela. He has boasted about making his country, indeed all of South America, Jew-free, or as the Nazis called it, Judenrein.
    How dare Kennedy.  But, hold on, wasn't Kennedy's grandfather and namesake a major public sympathizer of Adolf Hitler and the Nazi regime?  That's right, he was.  Maybe the apple doesn't fall far from the tree.

   

Oh yeah, that's believable

    The management of the French bank, Societe Generale, wants everyone to believe that a single junior employee made trades that lost the bank $7 billion dollars--that's $7,000,000,000.00 folks, without anyone else in the bank knowing anything about it.  Oh, and this junior banker did it without a personal profit motive.  What sort of chumps do they take us for?
    If, and I mean if, this is true then this bank is in even worse shape than if there was massive fraud.  How can an international bank have so few checks in place to not create a series of warning signals to management?  How can a single person get the ability to destroy two full year's of this bank's profits without coming to anyone attention?
    Aside from the enormity of the loss to this financial institution, the management of the Societe Generale, when it unwound its trading positions early this week, increased significantly the volatility in the markets, causing traders throughout the world to believe that massive dumping of stock in response to the sub-prime crisis was occurring.  This lead to even more panic selling.  How many more billions of dollars were cumulatively lost in the capital markets because of this bank's incredible misfeasance?  While the SG will have to seek $7 billion in capital just to replace its direct losses, it could, and indeed should, be brought into bankruptcy by potential lawsuits, as well as facing significant problems from global financial regulators.
    The one bright spot in all of this is that the Fed, spooked by the world markets' crashing Monday and Tuesday, dropped the discount rate by 75 basis points, thereby lowering everyone's adjustable mortgages and other variable rate loans.  Thank you, Societe Generale. 
    As John Houseman might have said in a commercial: You lost money the old fashioned way. You blew it.

Long gone

    When Calvin Coolidge died, Dorothy Parker, the writer and leader of the Algonquin Table, upon hearing the news asked "How can you tell?"  The same could be asked of Fred Thompson's withdrawal today from the Republican nomination.  He was so laid back that hardly anyone knew he was still in the race.      
    Except for Mike Huckabee.  Thompson was a critical factor in the South Carolina primary siphoning way votes that otherwise would have gone to Huckabee.  In fact, it is clear that had Thompson withdrew prior to Saturday, Huckabee would have edged out McCain, instead of the other way around.   That result would have changed the outlook for the nomination, making McCain's task much more formidable than it appears currently.
    Far be it for me to suggest, Heaven forfend, that former Senator Thompson would have delayed his announced leaving until after South Carolina purposely to give his former colleague and close friend McCain the boost he needed in that critical contest.  I guess we'll have to see if a President McCain makes the District Attorney from "Law & Order" the United States Attorney General. 

Ain't no style points given out in football

    The Patriots are happy that they're not.  Today's win against a very gritty San Diego Charger team was not pretty by any means.  Brady was having a off day for more than 45 minutes of the game.  His passes were frequently off the marks, frequently sailing higher than they should, even when the receivers grabbed them.  His three interceptions were all quarterback miscues as well.
    Yet the Patriots remembered how to play smashmouth football.  Relying upon the running game and a bend but not break defense that kept the Chargers from the end zone, the Patriots returned the favor to Brady, winning the game in spite, rather than because, of his performance.
    Phillip Rivers, whose manhood had been questioned by his teammates before today showed a determination and ability to play with pain that should alter his career, or at least how he is viewed throughout the NFL.  Cromartie and his band of merry men (hehehe) showed that they will continue to be a force for years to come.
    Two weeks to go.  Then the Pats have, as Junior Seau must have said twenty times in the post game press conference, "a chance to be an 'ever' team."

Johnny comes marching home

    It wasn't by much but politics ain't horseshoes and close doesn't count.  Tonight by a thin margin John McCain is the front runner, once again, for the GOP nomination.  Winning South Carolina gives McCain significant momentum as he moves into the big states contests in the next several weeks.   
    McCain's victory came from independents and moderate Republicans who recoiled from Huckabee's over the top rhetoric in the past several days.  If there is a piece of videotape which spelled the end of any serious chance for the nomination, it was of his speech when he called for changing the Constitution when it conflicted with "God's law."  Until that point non-evangelical social conservatives could persuade themselves that Huckabee was someone with whom they could deal.  After those remarks, the former Arkansas governor became radioactive to all but his base constituency.
    Huckabee will continue his campaign as he can live off the land and sees the 2008 race as laying a base for a future run for national office.  Fred Thompson, on the other hand, will probably take his hang-dog visage off the trail and back to Hollywood.  Romney, who won Nevada's caucuses today with the aid of a significant Mormon voting bloc, will pour his money and organization into the Super Tuesday states hoping that conservatives will hold their collective noses and support him over McCain.
    Where does that leave Giuliani?  Getting a tan in Florida with all of retired New Yorkers whom he hopes will not abandon him for McCain.  He has to hope that McCain's penchant for self-destruction will reassert itself in the coming weeks.  If so, he can be the moderates standard-bearer against Romney.     Still, even the most enthusiastic supporter of McCain or Romney has to wonder how and when the fickle winds that have swirled around this nomination will change again.   It is unlikely that these winds have decided tonight to blow in just a single direction. 
     On the Democratic side ground troops can over come charisma and Clinton demonstrated that today with her victory in the Nevada caucuses.  But the victory has come at an enormous cost.  Racial and gender wounds have been opened in the Party and no amount of HRC's saying that they all are "family" will make them go away.  Hold on, given that we know that she used to scream and throw lamps at Bill's head while in the White House, maybe the Democrats are her idea of family.

Rush to Fred

    Fred Thompson's campaign finally caught a break and just in time for the South Carolina primary.  The Thompson camp has staked the viability of its campaign on his carrying Saturday's southern primary.  As much as he has campaigned anywhere, and I realize that is a very low bar, he has been stumping in the Palmeto State.  However, the polls in the last several weeks have shown whatever meager support he has enjoyed is fading away quickly.
    Enter Rush.  Although he never did a formal endorsement, Limbaugh played portions of Thompson's stump speech, dubbing it "real conservatism."  This is in stark contrast with the phony conservative label he has hung on McCain, Huckabee and Giuliani.  Limbaugh doesn't carry any water for Romney either but his criticism has been muted as it is likely that Romney will become Rush's fall-back candidate if/when Thompson leaves the field.
    Like Imus, Limbaugh remembers well those who were with him and who fled when the going got tough.  Last year when Harry Reid attempted to smear Limbaugh taking his words out of context and twisting their meaning, only Thompson spoke out in his defense.  The rest of the Republican campaigns were conspicuous by their silence.  Today Fred got paid back.

Shrink giggle

    Joke heard at the national meeting of the American Psychoanalytic Association in New York.

Neurotics build castles in the sky,
Psychotics live in them, and
Psychoanalysts collect the rent.